My Turn: We need leaders who acknowledge their belief in God

By Wayne King

Published: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 11:00 AM.

We need leaders who understand this. We need leaders like Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan that aren’t afraid to recognize the role of God in the founding of our country and throughout its history. We need leaders who don’t have to be shamed into acknowledging God by the outrage of the American people when they fail to do so.

President Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861 with the nation on the verge of the Civil War said “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.”

His words ring as true now as they did 250 years ago.

It is a shame that the Democrats of today no longer share that belief.

Wayne King is the vice chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. King served as chairman of the North Carolina Delegation to the 2012 Republican National Convention, and served on the Platform Committee for the 2012 Convention. King is a past chairman of the NC 10th District Republican Party and the Cleveland County Republican Party.

During the Democratic National Convention here in my home state of North Carolina I was surprised and disheartened to learn that the Democratic National Committee, with no objection from the Obama campaign, had removed “God” from the party’s platform.

When this incident went viral, I was not surprised to see the vocal disappointment from Americans of many faiths and many walks of life. While I have many differences (to put it mildly) with the modern Democratic Party, I would never have believed they would strip God from their platform. I know many Democrats here in North Carolina found this decision disturbing, at the least.

The Obama campaign was quick to see how badly Americans were responding to this decision and tried to correct it behind the scenes. My disappointment turned to shock when I saw the reaction of DNC delegates to Platform Chairman and former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s motion to amend the platform and restore references to “God” in their platform.

As Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa desperately tried to get hundreds of angry Democratic delegates under control, he was forced to call for a voice vote on the motion three times before he could even pretend that the “ayes” outweighed the “nays” and rule that the motion had passed over the chorus of boos raining down on him from a clear majority of delegates.

Boos.

Boos from activist Democrats, angry that their party would include God in their party platform.

Boos from Democrats so out of touch with American and North Carolina values that acknowledging faith became an opportunity for ugly political theater. It was a look inside the values of the modern Democratic Party...and it wasn’t pretty.

This was a sad moment for Americans of all political stripes as one of our two major parties openly rejected God. It was more so when their hostility to faith was shown on the floor of the DNC that day. I know it would shock many of my North Carolina Democrat friends.

Our nation was clearly built upon a rock-solid foundation of faith in God, and founded by men who held the deepest belief in Divine providence. The Lord’s grace over America was never, in their minds and hearts, a matter of question.

Our founders had a profound and abiding faith that our rights come from God and Nature, not merely government. They built our enduring Constitution around those principles, with understanding that America’s perseverance and prosperity would always informed more by faith than by distant government. For over 250 years, neither party questioned this, until now.

Faith and trust in God has been a steady wind at our backs, carrying Americans through every challenge we have faced. The men and women who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, and who fight today in the war on terror never abandoned their faith in God.

The folks who struggled through the Depression never abandoned their faith in God.

That same faith is helping to sustain the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans who are desperate for an economic revival.

And that faith is needed more than ever, as government spending has pushed our nation to the edge of the fiscal cliff and as debt and deficits threaten to destroy our economy.

We need leaders who understand this. We need leaders like Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan that aren’t afraid to recognize the role of God in the founding of our country and throughout its history. We need leaders who don’t have to be shamed into acknowledging God by the outrage of the American people when they fail to do so.

President Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861 with the nation on the verge of the Civil War said “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.”

His words ring as true now as they did 250 years ago.

It is a shame that the Democrats of today no longer share that belief.

Wayne King is the vice chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. King served as chairman of the North Carolina Delegation to the 2012 Republican National Convention, and served on the Platform Committee for the 2012 Convention. King is a past chairman of the NC 10th District Republican Party and the Cleveland County Republican Party.